Talent Titans #41 – How Much Should Recruiters Push?

Suky goes into detail regarding a question that came up from last weeks video: how much should you push a candidate as a recruiter?

Transcription

Hi I’m Suky from Professional Selection. I’d like to continue talking on from our video from a couple of weeks
ago about how aggressive some recruiters are seen. One of the questions that came back from that was actually
from recruiters, and the question was when they’re head hunting a candidate how pushy, aggressive should they be
to engage that candidate?

That’s a really interesting question because there’s a number of things I would take into account, first of all,
your relationship with that particular candidate. If you have an existing relationship and you strongly feel that
this is the right role for them, then I think you can afford to be a little pushy. But what happens when you don’t
have that level of relationship? I still think you can’t be perceived as being pushy but you can certainly ask
them a couple of key questions, and one of those questions obviously is going to be: “okay, if you’re not interested
in this opportunity yourself let me just take an extra minute to tell you about the position as you you may have
somebody in your network.”

One of two things are gonna happen from that. A: the candidate, suddenly now that they’re hearing about the position
is having a change of heart and thinking: “That’s interesting, actually you know what call me later I may be interested,
let’s talk more. Great, mission accomplished. Alternatively they may look at it and say: “you know what, my colleague
might be interested in that position.” So they may refer the candidate to you or they may feel far more comfortable
reaching out to their contact and then introducing you.

So again, there’s not a right or wrong answer. You’ve got to look at your relationship and as a minimum ask the
individual if they’ll give you the opportunity to just hear you through on what you’re looking for in that role.
If they say no I don’t want to hear about it, then thank them for their time and move on. It’s as simple as that.

As always, I’m sure there’s many other comments and thoughts and so forth, would love to hear them. Thanks for listening.